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The aim of this study was to determine if phonological processing deficits in specific reading disability (SRD) and specific language impairment (SLI) are the same or different. In four separate analyses, a different combination of reading and spoken language measures was used to divide 73 children into three subgroups: poor readers with average spoken language (SRD), poor readers with poor spoken language (SRD + SLI) and average readers with poor spoken language (SLI). These groups were compared on five phonological processing measures. The SRD group had deficits in neural representations of phonemes, phoneme discrimination, phoneme awareness and rapid naming. The SRD + SLI group had more severe deficits than the SRD group on half of these measures, as well as phonological short-term memory. Children with SLI were free from phonological processing deficits. Thus, phonological processing deficits were the same or different in SRD and SLI, depending on how SRD and SLI were defined, and how phonological processing was measured. (Contains 6 tables.)

There has been much recent interest in letter position coding in adults, but little is known about the development of this process in children learning to read. Here, the letter position coding abilities of 127 children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (aged 7-10 years) were examined by comparing their performance in reading aloud "migratable" words (e.g., "bread," "three," "diary") with that in reading aloud words without potential for migration (e.g., "heard," "boot," "bitter"). Across all three grade levels, children made many more errors on migratable words than on non-migratable words, and the proportion of migration errors did not decrease with increasing grade level. Within each grade, a tendency to make a high proportion of migration errors was not associated with deficits in other reading subprocesses or with general lexical guessing; indeed, it was associated with strong lexical reading skills. We conclude that letter position coding is generally fragile in developing readers and that this interacts with lexical knowledge to produce migration errors in reading. (Contains 1 figure and 8 tables.)

The focus of this paper is on the assessment of the two main processes that children must acquire at the single word reading level: word recognition (lexical) and decoding (nonlexical) skills. Guided by the framework of the dual route model, this study aimed to (1) investigate the impact of item characteristics on test performance, and (2) determine to what extent widely used reading measures vary in their detection of lexical and nonlexical reading difficulties. Thirty children with reading difficulties were administered selected reading subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson III, the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test--Second Edition, the Castles and Coltheart Reading Test 2 (CC2), as well as a measure of nonverbal IQ. Both within-subjects analyses and descriptive data are presented. Results suggest that in comparison to a pure measure of irregular word reading, children with reading difficulties perform better on word identification subtests containing both regular and irregular word items. Furthermore, certain characteristics (e.g., length, similarity to real words) appear to influence the level of difficulty of nonword items and tests. The CC2 subscales identified the largest proportions of children with reading difficulties. Differences between all test scores were of statistical and clinical significance. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

We report the first three cases of selective developmental letter position dyslexia in English. Although the parents and teachers of the children were concerned about these children's reading, standard tests did not reveal their deficit. It was only when the appropriate target words were presented, in this case, migratable words, that their letter position dyslexia was detected. Whereas previous research has described cases with acquired and developmental forms of letter position dyslexia in Hebrew and Arabic readers, this is the first report of this type of reading disorder in English. The cardinal symptom of letter position dyslexia is the migration of letters within the word (reading "slime" as "smile"; "pirates" as "parties"). These migration errors occur in reading aloud as well as in tasks of silent reading. This study provides further evidence that migration errors emerge at the level of early visual-orthographic analysis, in the letter position encoding function. Alternative explanations for the occurrence of migration errors such as poor phonological processing or a deficit in the orthographic input lexicon are ruled out. (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables.)

Two prominent dual-route computational models of reading aloud are the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model, and the connectionist dual-process plus (CDP+) model. While sharing similarly designed lexical routes, the two models differ greatly in their respective nonlexical route architecture, such that they often differ on nonword pronunciation. Neither model has been appropriately tested for nonword reading pronunciation accuracy to date. We argue that empirical data on the nonword reading pronunciation of people is the ideal benchmark for testing. Data were gathered from 45 Australian-English-speaking psychology undergraduates reading aloud 412 nonwords. To provide contrast between the models, the nonwords were chosen specifically because DRC and CDP+ disagree on their pronunciation. Both models failed to accurately match the experiment data, and both have deficiencies in nonword reading performance. However, the CDP+ model performed significantly worse than the DRC model. CDP++, the recent successor to CDP+, had improved performance over CDP+, but was also significantly worse than DRC. In addition to highlighting performance shortcomings in each model, the variety of nonword responses given by participants points to a need for models that can account for this variety. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures and 3 footnotes.)

There is increasing evidence of a relationship between orthographic processing skill, or the ability to form, store and access word representations, and reading ability. Empirical research to date has not, however, clarified the direction of this relationship. We examined this question in a three-year longitudinal study of children from Grades 1 to 3. We included standard measures of orthographic processing skill, at both the lexical and sublexical level, and word reading accuracy, as well as controls of vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and phonological awareness. In all analyses, word reading predicted progress in acquiring orthographic processing skill, regardless of grade level or orthographic processing measure. In contrast, orthographic processing skill did not predict progress in word reading. Our results suggest that, between Grades 1 and 3, children acquire orthographic processing skill through their reading and that this ability, as characterized by the most common tasks used to date, does not play an independent role in supporting reading acquisition. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

A controversial question in reading research is whether dyslexia is associated with impairments in the magnocellular system and, if so, how these low-level visual impairments might affect reading acquisition. This study used a novel chromatic flicker perception task to specifically explore "temporal" aspects of magnocellular functioning in 40 children with dyslexia and 42 age-matched controls (aged 7-11). The relationship between magnocellular temporal resolution and higher-level aspects of visual temporal processing including inspection time, single and dual-target (attentional blink) RSVP performance, go/no-go reaction time, and rapid naming was also assessed. The Dyslexia group exhibited significant deficits in magnocellular temporal resolution compared with controls, but the two groups did not differ in parvocellular temporal resolution. Despite the significant group differences, associations between magnocellular temporal resolution and reading ability were relatively weak, and links between low-level temporal resolution and reading ability did not appear specific to the magnocellular system. Factor analyses revealed that a collective "Perceptual Speed" factor, involving both low-level and higher-level visual temporal processing measures, accounted for unique variance in reading ability independently of phonological processing, rapid naming, and general ability. (Contains 8 footnotes, 7 tables, and 5 figures.)

The self-teaching hypothesis proposes that orthographic learning takes place via phonological decoding in meaningful texts, that is, in context. Context is proposed to be important in learning to read, especially when decoding is only partial. However, little research has directly explored this hypothesis. The current study looked at the effect of context on orthographic learning and examined whether there were different effects for novel words given regular and irregular pronunciations. Two experiments were conducted using regular and irregular novel words, respectively. Second-grade children were asked to learn eight novel words either in stories or in a list of words. The results revealed no significant effect of context for the regular items. However, in an orthographic decision task, there was a facilitatory effect of context on irregular novel word learning. The findings support the view that contextual information is important to orthographic learning, but only when the words to be learned contain irregular spelling-sound correspondences. (Contains 2 tables and 6 figures.)

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but not others. A selective effect of this training was found on their phonemic awareness task performance for the trained items. These findings point to the multidetermined nature of performance on tasks normally considered as measuring phonemic awareness and have implications for theories of the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences underpins successful reading acquisition, and yet little is known about how young children acquire this knowledge and what prior information they bring to the learning process. In this study, we used an experimental training design to examine whether either prior letter awareness or prior phonemic awareness directly assists preliterate children in subsequently learning letter-sound correspondences. Here 76 preschoolers received 6 weeks of training in either letter awareness, phonemic awareness, or control tasks and then received a further 6 weeks of training in either letter-sound correspondences or control tasks. There was limited evidence that prior training in either phoneme or letter awareness directly assisted learning of letter-sound correspondences, although phonemically trained children appeared to show some advantage on recognition tasks. Overall, the data suggest that there is little value in training preschoolers in either letter forms or sounds in isolation in advance of providing instruction on the links between the two. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

We present administration details and normative data for a new version of the word and nonword reading test originally developed by Castles and Coltheart. The new test contains an expanded set of items, with 40 each of regular words, irregular words and nonwords, rather than the original 30 items of each type. The new items extend the upper-end of the difficulty range of the test, making it less susceptible to ceiling effects than the original version. The test also incorporates a stopping-rule, which makes administration of the test less time-consuming and removes the stress on children who can only read a few items. The test is free of charge and is available to teachers, professionals and researchers in both pencil-and-paper and computer-based formats from the Macquarie On-line Test Interface (MOTIF: http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/research/resources). (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

In this paper, we discuss a variety of spelling tests that are used to assess developmental spelling difficulties. We differentiate between tests that are valuable tools to monitor spelling development and spelling tests that should be used to further assess children who are not making sufficient progress in the mainstream classroom. We recommend the use of several tests in order to achieve these assessment goals. This paper is a practical guide for clinicians and teachers concerned with the assessment (and treatment) of poor spellers. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 14 notes.)

Recent years have brought about rapid advances in our understanding of reading and how it develops, particularly in relation to the importance of alphabetic coding skills. However, much less has been known about the transition from alphabetic decoding to the rapid and automatic orthographic recognition of words, which is the hallmark of skilled reading. The purpose of this special issue is to focus specifically on orthographic processes in reading and how they are acquired. The present paper provides an overview of the special issue, drawing attention to key themes that run through the various contributions.

There is increasing evidence that orthographic information has an impact on spoken word processing. However, much of this evidence comes from tasks that are subject to strategic effects. In the three experiments reported here, we examined activation of orthographic information during spoken word processing within a paradigm that is unlikely to involve strategic factors, namely auditory priming where the relationship between prime and target was masked from awareness. Specifically, we examined whether auditory primes that were homographic with their spoken targets (e.g., the pseudohomograph /dri:d/, which can be spelled the same as the target word "dread") produced greater facilitation than primes that were equally phonologically related to their targets but could not be spelled the same as them (e.g., /sri:d/ followed by the spoken word "shred"). Two auditory lexical decision experiments produced clear pseudohomograph priming even though the participants were unaware of the orthographic relationship between the primes and targets. A task that required participants to merely repeat the spoken target revealed an effect of orthography on error rates, but not on latencies. It was concluded that, in literate adults, orthography is important in speech recognition just as phonology is important in reading.

A masked priming procedure was used to explore developmental changes in the tuning of lexical word recognition processes. Lexical tuning was assessed by examining the degree of masked form priming and used two different types of prime-target lexical similarity: one letter different (e.g., rlay [right arrow] PLAY) and transposed letters (e.g., lpay [right arrow] PLAY). The performance of skilled adult readers was compared with that of developing readers in Grade 3. The same children were then tested again two years later, when they were in Grade 5. The skilled adult readers showed no form priming, indicating that their recognition mechanisms for these items had become finely tuned. In contrast, the Grade 3 readers showed substantial form priming effects for both measures of lexical similarity. When retested in Grade 5, the developing readers no longer showed significant one letter different priming, but transposed letter priming remained. In general, these results provide evidence for a transition from more broadly tuned to more finely tuned lexical recognition mechanisms and are interpreted in the context of models of word recognition.

We develop and test a dual-route model of genetic effects on reading aloud and spelling, based on irregular and non-word reading and spelling performance assessed in 1382 monozygotic and dizygotic twins. As in earlier research, most of the variance in reading was due to genetic effects. However, there were three more specific conclusions: the first was that most of the genetic effect is common to both regular and irregular reading. In addition to this common variance evidence was found for distinct genes influencing the acquisition of a lexicon of stored words, and additional genetic effects influencing the acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. The third conclusion, from a combined model of reading and spelling, is that reading and spelling have a common genetic basis. Models that did not distinguish lexical and non-lexical performance fit significantly worse than dual route genetic models. An implication of the research is that models of reading, whether connectionist or dual-route, must allow for the genetic independence of neurological processes underlying the decoding of non-words and irregular words.

This experiment investigated orthographic learning via self-teaching in 8- and 9-year-olds learning to read English. Children were exposed to novel words, and following a 1- or 7-day delay interval, orthographic learning was assessed by asking children to select previously seen novel words from an array of visually and phonologically similar foils. Novel words were exposed either in meaningful text or in isolation, and number of exposures was manipulated with each novel word appearing once, twice, or four times. Learning increased as a function of number of exposures, although some evidence of durable one-trial learning was observed. Context played no role, suggesting that orthographic learning is not dependent on meaning-based information. In general, these findings offer support for the central aspects of Share's self-teaching hypothesis. However, although we observed a general relation between phonological decoding and orthographic learning, the relation did not hold at an item-by-item level of analysis, suggesting that a strong version of Share's item-based account is not correct.

This review discusses the important contribution made by one particular theoretical model of reading--the dual route model--to the identification and understanding of different varieties of developmental dyslexia. The model itself is first outlined, and the particular types of reading disorder that would be predicted to occur based on this model are described. The evidence for the existence of these patterns of reading disability is then reviewed and advances that have been made in understanding their basis and aetiology are described. Finally, some suggestions are made about how best to take research on heterogeneity in developmental dyslexia forward, moving away from distinct subtypes and more towards model-based reading profiles. (Contains 1 figure.)

Three experiments investigated the effects of rime consistency on reading and spelling among developing readers ranging in age from 7 to 11 years. Experiment 1 found that children read words with inconsistent feedforward mappings between orthography and phonology (O [right arrow] P) less accurately than consistent words. OP consistency interacted with chronological age, word frequency and age-of-acquisition (AoA). The effect of OP consistency on reading was larger for younger children than for older children and OP consistency had an effect for low frequency words and late-acquired words only. Experiment 2 found an effect of feedforward consistency between phonology and orthography (P [right arrow] O) on children's spelling but no interaction between PO consistency and AoA. Experiment 3 showed that the effects of feedforward consistency are independent of feedback consistency. Our results challenge models of reading and spelling that assume feedforward consistency effects are influenced by the frequency of exposure to words only and we suggest that interactions between consistency and AoA depends on the ratio of consistent to inconsistent OP mappings.

The relation between reading ability and performance on an auditory temporal pattern discrimination task was investigated in children who were either good or delayed readers. The stimuli in the primary task consisted of sequences of tones, alternating between high and low frequencies. The threshold interstimulus interval (ISI) for discrimination of differences in the temporal properties of the sequences was measured. An ISI threshold was also measured in a control task that was identical to the primary task, except all tones in a control sequence had the same frequency. Delayed readers and good readers were equally able to discriminate the timing of the sequences at short ISIs, for both the primary and control tasks. Furthermore, the ISI thresholds were not correlated with the ability to read either irregular words or nonwords. These results suggest that reading ability is not related to the ability to track large and rapid frequency changes in auditory temporal patterns.

In this review, we re-assess the evidence that phonological awareness represents a skill specific to spoken language that precedes and directly influences the process of reading acquisition. Longitudinal and experimental training studies are examined in detail, as these are considered most appropriate for exploring a causal hypothesis of this nature. A particular focus of our analysis is the degree to which studies to date have controlled for existing literacy skills in their participants and the influence that these skills might have on performance on phonological awareness tasks. We conclude that no study has provided unequivocal evidence that there is a causal link from competence in phonological awareness to success in reading and spelling acquisition. However, we believe that such a study is possible and outline some ideas for its design and implementation.

Finds unexpectedly poor spellers relative to above average spellers revealed less extensive word-specific knowledge in their misspellings but not inferior knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, indicating that many of their orthographic representations lack word-specific graphemic information. Shows poorer spellers were inferior at rapid orthographic analysis, and the origin of their disadvantage was not explained by more limited print exposure. (RS)